


rest with me until a brighter day

by blackkat



Series: Stupid MadaTobi AUs [18]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Reconciliation, Unhealthy Relationships, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 06:38:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15528351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: The sudden, strangling grip of hands wakes Tobirama from a dead sleep.





	rest with me until a brighter day

**Author's Note:**

> For MadaTobi Week! Posting early because I'll be traveling all day tomorrow and won't get a chance, but I wanted to participate anyway. Since MadaTobi is one of the things that got me back into Naruto to begin with, it has a special place in my heart.

The sudden, strangling grip of hands wakes Tobirama from a dead sleep.

He surfaces from dreams with a cry on his lips, one hand grabbing for a kunai, but there's a shape on top of him that’s too heavy to move, a hand around his throat and another on his sword-hand, and Tobirama jerks, thrashes, tries to get the leverage to throw his attacker off—

Something wet and hot hits his bare shoulder, and for one bewildering moment Tobirama thinks it’s blood. He freezes, absolutely certain he wasn’t able to wound the figure, and it’s only then that he registers the brush of long dark hair falling all around him.

 _Hashirama_ , he almost says in bewilderment, opens his mouth to voice it before the burn of fire-bright chakra registers, and he goes tense all over again. Hashirama is warm earth and sunlight to his senses, vast like an ancient forest; this is the searing heat of a wildfire, ready to consume, gusting and blazing across his senses. _Madara_ , he thinks instead, and Tobirama isn't usually one for fear but right now the surge of it is all he can feel. Madara's hand is around his throat, breath hot against Tobirama’s cheek like he’s going to rip Tobirama’s throat out with his teeth, and the weight of him is too much for Tobirama to move, a solid threat that Tobirama can't defeat.

He goes perfectly, deathly still, waiting for the blow, wondering if this is how Hashirama will find him in the morning, slaughtered in his bed by his former friend.

And then something wet touches his shoulder again, two more drops, a third. No smell of blood in the air, just—

Madara hunches over him, and his shoulders shake. He sobs once, raw and deep and awful, and his hand loosens. He folds forward, collapsing on top of Tobirama like his muscles have all abruptly failed, and curls into his body with another wracking sob. His fingers twist into Tobirama’s blankets, white-knuckled, and he shakes as if he’s going to fall apart.

Numb with utter shock, Tobirama blinks at the darkened ceiling for an endless moment, Madara sobbing into his shoulder like Hashirama used to do as a child. The mere fact that he’s not dead yet is astonishing, and Tobirama’s brain is still trying to process that part of it, never mind Madara grieving on top of him.

It _is_ grieving, too, raw and wild in a way Tobirama has never seen from Madara before. It’s all the pain he’s never shown, and Tobirama can feel each ragged sound reverberating through him, painful in its intensity. He stares upward for one more second, then closes his eyes and breathes out through his nose, slow and deep. Lifts an arm, and carefully drapes it over Madara's shoulders, gripping lightly.

Madara's hands untwist from the blankets, sink into Tobirama’s hair, and he pulls him one inch closer, breathes out wet and gasping against his skin. “It was all a lie,” he says, and his voice is _broken_. Tobirama hasn’t ever heard it like that before, not when Izuna died, not when Hashirama defeated Madara and dragged him back to the village. Not the first time he and Tobirama had sex, and Madara had so clearly hated himself in the aftermath.

“A lie?” Tobirama asks carefully, because it feels like speaking will make Madara vanish, drive this strange apparition away and prove it all a dream. Swallows, and asks more quietly, “Madara, what is…”

 _Wrong_ , he wants to say, but there's too much. Izuna, and Madara's other brothers before him. The Uchiha turning to Konoha instead of Madara, eschewing his search for revenge. Hashirama being elected as Hokage instead of Madara, despite Hashirama intending the position for him, to prove that Konoha was theirs—

Tobirama wasn’t truly surprised when Madara left the village. He had seen it coming in the months beforehand, in the violence that was rising in Madara's heart. Their tumbles had become less about recovery and a change in beliefs, and more about making Tobirama hurt, or giving Madara a moment of release when he could forget everything. It meant waking up to Hashirama sad and grim and solitary hadn’t made Tobirama so much as falter, but…knowing he’s come back?

That’s the part Tobirama can't even begin to understand.

“He said it was the hidden truth,” Madara breathes into his skin. “He said that it was the way to give everyone their happy ending.”

Something like a chill slides down Tobirama’s spine, and he cups Madara's face in one hand, pushes up on his elbow. There's moonlight spilling through the window, but not enough for this; Tobirama shapes a hand sign, focuses, and the lamp wicks all flare and catch at once. Looks, and—

“Madara?” he asks, staring into one wholly violet eye. The other is the familiar Sharingan, spinning slowly, but the purple eye is something entirely different. Madara looks subtly older, too, though Tobirama couldn’t point to any one thing as the cause. His hair is longer, and there's a broadness to his shoulders that wasn’t there before. That chill is back, sharper this time, and Tobirama sits back, tries to think. Madara has only been gone a week; there's no reason he should be this different. No possible way and Tobirama opens his mouth to ask—

“Look at you,” Madara says roughly, and pushes forward. Tobirama slides back automatically, but Madara doesn’t stop, crowds him right up against the wall and slides in between Tobirama’s spread thighs. His eyes catch Tobirama’s, and Tobirama braces himself, tenses, but there's no lurching whirl of a genjutsu rising. Just a hand on his cheek, a bare, awful smile on Madara's face and the wetness streaked beneath his eyes. “So _young_. I had forgotten you looked like this once.”

“Madara?” Tobirama asks, and there's a flicker of suspicion rising, a trace of calculation that he can't help. An older Madara, speaking like it’s been far more than the week that Tobirama has lived since he left, with his robes scorched and torn, his touch gentle when the one Tobirama parted from would have grabbed his hair and kissed him so hard it made him bleed.

Madara makes a sound, and Tobirama can't tell if it’s a laugh or another sob. He slumps forward, forehead resting against Tobirama’s, and breathes out, but his eyes don’t close and his gaze doesn’t waver from Tobirama’s, like he’s drinking him in.

“All _lies_ ,” he says, and that’s the venom Tobirama remembers, just—not directed at him. “Everything he said, everything he showed me, our _history_ —”

Tobirama would never call himself tentative, but he’s a touch slower, more cautious than usual when he reaches up, rests a hand on Madara's back again. “Who?” he asks. “Madara, did someone try to fool you?”

“He _did_ fool me!” Madara snarls, and Tobirama tenses. Instantly, Madara's eyes widen, and his expression twists, fury and grief all tangled up. Falls forward, wrapping his arms entirely around Tobirama and dragging him up against his chest, and when he breathes out it’s ragged and on the verge of a sob.

“We had something, once,” he says into Tobirama’s ear, and his grip is tight, desperate. He smells of ashes and smoke and raw chakra, and Tobirama knows very well the clinging miasma of a battlefield. Smelling it on Madara now should be a surprise, but—

This is not the Madara who left. This Madara is broken, angry, just like the other was, but it’s turned inward now instead of outward, targeted instead of hurled wildly at the world as a whole. Tobirama isn't sure what brought the change, yet, but he can feel it.

Madara's fingers grip, but they don’t bruise.

It feels like taking his first full breath in years, like relief, like landing on his feet after a dangerous fall. Tobirama curls his fingers into Madara's hair, brushes it back to study his face and the mismatched eyes, and traces the corner of one with his thumb. “You’re back,” he says, and means it more than just physically. There was a time, after all, between Izuna's death and Madara's departure, when Madara called Konoha home. When he looked around the village and thought it was a place to stay, when he laughed with the Uchiha and the Senju alike and watched the children play with a smile. A quiet man, weary with loss, but Tobirama had looked at that same man and felt—

Well. Everything, Tobirama supposes. Not that he’d allowed himself to show it once Madara started to fall apart.

Madara laughs, and the sound breaks in his mouth even as he leans into the weight of Tobirama’s hand. “Such a pretty idiot,” he says, but the words don’t have the trace of threat they once would have. “I could kill you right now, Tobirama.” A pause, and he breathes out, presses his cheek to Tobirama’s palm. His eyes are half-lidded as they stare up at Tobirama, and Tobirama wants to _know_ , looks into his eyes and wants to understand the power of that violet eye, how Madara got it, why his Sharingan changed. Something of that must be visible on his face, because Madara laughs again, hoarse but genuine, and his grip tightens. He drags Tobirama down, topples him onto his back and slides between his legs, and maybe it’s madness, maybe it’s the same fascination that a cobra feels before the snake charmer, but Tobirama lets him, eases his grip and lets Madara press him down into the blankets.

Like a big cat, Madara looms over him on his hands and knees, and there’s something wild in his face, something full of sharp edges like shattered glass. “Look at you,” he says again, and curls his fingers into Tobirama’s fringe, pinning his head in place. “You’d let me do anything to you. Don’t you _remember_ , Tobirama?”

“You're as conceited as ever,” Tobirama informs him, rolling his eyes. “Of course I remember, Madara. How many years in the future are you from? Are you certain _you_ remember?”

He has the satisfaction of seeing Madara's eyes widen sharply. He rears back, staring at Tobirama for a long moment, and then blinks. Laughs, again, and this time it’s the sound Tobirama remembers from his good times, the years he was _happy_ in Konoha. Leaning down, he presses his forehead to Tobirama’s, but this time he closes his eyes, and there's a smile on his strangely aged face. A face caught halfway, Tobirama thinks, tracing his fingers across Madara's cheekbones. Like his old body and his new body are fighting for space beneath the same skin. It’s a fascinating thought, as is the idea of time travel at all, and Tobirama wants to _know_.

“It doesn’t matter,” Madara says softly. “He betrayed me. There was never a perfect world waiting for me.”

“No world is perfect,” Tobirama says, equally soft, and for the first time since Madara slipped fully into paranoia and madness, he leans up, presses a kiss to the corner of his lips.

The sound Madara makes is wretched, wrecked. He turns his head, catches Tobirama’s mouth in a deep, devouring kiss that steals every last inch of Tobirama’s breath. His mouth is hot, tastes like ashes and blood and the same bitterness that fills his eyes, but when he draws back he’s smiling, just a little.

“This one was supposed to be,” he says, and it’s as raw as an open wound. “But—it was a dream, that’s all, and now I'm awake.”

“Harder to live while you’re awake,” Tobirama says, studying the lines of his face, half-familiar and well-remembered. “But more rewarding, I would think.” Pauses, watching Madara, and then asks quietly, “How many years?”

Grief twists Madara's face, and he kisses Tobirama again, slow and deep. “More than you can know,” he says, and splays a gloved hand over Tobirama’s bare chest, slides it down slow and deliberate to curl around his hip. “So long,” he whispers into Tobirama’s ear, like it’s a secret. Kisses his cheek, and drags his mouth up to nip at the lobe of Tobirama’s ear. “I spent all of it hating you. Every _second_ hating what you are, and what you did. And whenever I closed my eyes, when I dreamed, you were still there. A hundred perfect worlds, I imagined, and you were smiling at me in every one of them.”

It makes Tobirama smile regardless of the tone, faint and amused and fond, and he curls a leg around Madara's thighs, lets his other fall open. “An imperfection,” he suggests, “to make the perfection more enjoyable.”

Madara snorts, digs his fingers into Tobirama’s hair. “ _Maddening_ ,” he accuses, and it’s hardly the first time Tobirama has heard the word directed at him. He arches a smug brow at Madara, and Madara huffs and kisses him another time, covers him with his body and groans as his covered cock slides across Tobirama’s stomach.

“ _Decades_ and I still thought about this,” he rasps. “And then I step into this room and here you are, laid out like a gift.” Huffs, and corrects with a sharper edge, “A _temptation_.”

“I notice,” Tobirama says, lazy, “that I was your first stop in the village. Clearly you're terrible at resisting temptation.”

For a moment the flicker of Madara's expression is dark, grim. Then he smiles wryly, strokes his thumb over Tobirama’s hipbone. “I think that was very evident,” he murmurs, almost sad, and rests his head on Tobirama’s collarbone for a moment. Breathes out, lashes sweeping Tobirama’s skin, and his hand tightens on Tobirama’s hip, slides down to grip his thigh. “Alone in the dark and you were all I could think of, you little _rat_ ,” he says without bite. “You, like this, bare and waiting for me. All the world at my feet, and getting you on your knees counted for more than any other victory.”

Tobirama’s breath catches at the feel of leather sliding up the inside of his thigh, and he swallows. Thinks, for a moment, that he could use Hiraishin, could reverse their positions and pin Madara, but—this is good as well.

“The whole world?” he asks, raising a brow. “Did you have plans, Madara? Was I going to be your concubine?”

Madara makes a low, sharp, desperate sound, crushes his mouth to Tobirama’s. Doesn’t answer, but then, he doesn’t have to; Tobirama can feel the hard cock against his own, only separated by a thin layer of fabric. With a snicker, Tobirama answers it, hooks both legs around Madara's thighs and murmurs against his mouth, “I want to know how you traveled through time.”

“Of course you do,” Madara says, exasperated, and hitches Tobirama’s hips up, getting his hands under his thighs. “If I tell you what to do, are you going to refuse just to be contrary, you maddening creature?”

Tobirama laughs at that, low and husky. Rolls his shoulders back, arching his spine and stretching his arms out above his head, and gives Madara his slyest smile. “I think that depends on the order,” he says. “And whether I like it or not.”

“Damn you,” Madara says, closing his eyes for a brief moment, but he’s smiling. “And damn me for missing you.”

Tobirama’s been missing Madara for a full year now, since he started to get quieter and darker and angrier, slipped away like sand through Tobirama’s fingers. He doesn’t say it, just laces a hand through Madara's thick, soft hair and asks, “Are you going to try to order me around, or have you seen the error of your ways?”

He means the words lightly, teasingly, but they make Madara flinch. With a wretched sound he goes to pull away, and Tobirama only just manages to get an arm around his back, hold him close instead of letting him slip back. Madara doesn’t fight the hold; as soon as he feels the pressure he goes still, hands tightening on Tobirama’s skin, and breathes out raggedly. It’s a vivid reminder of the tears, and Tobirama winces where Madara can't see, softens his grip and strokes Madara's hair instead.

“You can't begin to imagine what I’ve done,” Madara tells him, and this time when he laughs there’s nothing of humor in it. Splintered glass and ash on the tongue, and he lays a kiss over Tobirama’s heart, so careful and light Tobirama can barely feel it. “Part of me still wants to kill you for what you did to my brother, Tobirama. Part of me still _hates_ you.”

“But not all of you,” Tobirama says logically, and thinks of Madara's hand around his throat. An impulse, a threat, but—

He didn’t squeeze. He could have easily, could have broken Tobirama’s neck before he even opened his eyes, but he didn’t.

Madara's next breath is heavy with humor and an undercurrent of pain. “No,” he agrees, and slides his arms around Tobirama’s back. Rolls, settling on his side, and pulls Tobirama against his chest, burying his face in his white hair. “Not all of me.”

Tobirama traces the muscles of his arm, strokes his hair. Closes his eyes, and it’s not the sort of thing to smile about, but he almost wants to.

“You’ve changed,” he says softly. It gets him another flinch, but he doesn’t waver, adds, “However things played out, you plan to change them now.”

It’s not a question, but Madara makes a sound of confirmation. “I was fooled,” he says hoarsely. “I _was_ a fool.”

“Then the future will be different,” Tobirama says, and means _we can be different._

Like he can hear the unspoken words, Madara tightens his grip. “Every perfect world I saw,” he says, traced through with grief. “Every one. You were there and you _looked_ at me.”

Of course he didn’t notice. “I always have,” Tobirama tells him, rolling his eyes. “Pay better attention, idiot.”

A choked laugh against his hair, a warm breath against his cheek. Madara pulls back enough to kiss him, then curls around him, letting his hair fall over them like a curtain to keep the world out. “I'm not the one who gets so caught up in my experiments that I forget to eat,” he retorts.

There’s a response on Tobirama’s tongue, but he gets distracted by the thought, by the violet eye that holds his gaze. “You’re going to tell me how you traveled through time,” he says, definitive. “The applications of a jutsu powerful enough to bend—”

With a groan, Madara tips forward again, planting his face in the blankets above Tobirama’s shoulder and half-smothering him with his hair. “I _hate you_ ,” he says, muffled, but the inflection this time is far different than before.

“It’s fascinating,” Tobirama says, faintly miffed. He shoves Madara's hair out of his face, but doesn’t try to nudge Madara off of him. Rather likes the weight, honestly, the clear reminder that this isn't something out of a fractured dream. Touches, carefully, with a hand between Madara's shoulder blades and a breath of his smell, ashes and fire and cold nights, and Tobirama closes his eyes.

There's a streak of wetness on his shoulder, hot like spilled blood. Tears, he thinks, and Madara never wept before. Certainly not like that, desperate and ragged with his grief. Whoever tricked him, whatever he did in the name of that dream he wanted, he’s a different man now. A broken one, but—maybe in a different way than he was before.

“You came back,” he says softly, and means _thank you_ , or _we’ll do better this time_ , or _I'm so glad_. Maybe even _my feelings for you have never changed_.

“I woke up,” Madara says, bare and terrible with its rawness, but there's a bittersweet smile pressed into Tobirama’s skin. “And then I came home.”

Tobirama doesn’t answer, just holds Madara close in the flickering light and doesn’t let go.


End file.
